


Semblant

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Nightmares, Partners to Lovers, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: His reaction time is getting better. The sheets on her side are still clinging to the warmth of her body when a Disturbance in the Force wakens him. He’s on his feet in seconds. He’s sort of on his feet. He’s on one foot, hopping clumsily into the leg of his pajama pants, then he’s on his ass on the edge of the bed, trying to extract one of his two legs from that flannel-y prison into the other leg of the pajama pants, where it belongs.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this was a one-shot, but it turned into a two-shot; set sometime early S5

His reaction time is getting better. The sheets on her side are still clinging to the warmth of her body when a Disturbance in the Force wakens him. He’s on his feet in seconds. He’s sort of on his feet. He’s on one foot, hopping clumsily into the leg of his pajama pants, then he’s on his ass on the edge of the bed, trying to extract one of his _two_ legs from that flannel-y prison into the _other_ leg of the pajama pants, where it belongs. 

It’s less than a minute, though. Even with all that song and dance—or cursing and dance or _whatever_ —his internal sense of Time Elapsed Since Disturbance in the Force, backed up by informal thermal data gleaned from the bed linens tells him that his reconnaissance mission is underway in less than minute. 

He’d feel prouder of that fact if the reason for it didn’t worry him a little. His reaction time is getting better, because he’s had a lot of practice of late. She’s been up and about a lot lately—or at least up and about more than she had been in the first few weeks after the storm—and he’s not sure what that’s about. He’s not sure if he’s worrying too much or not enough. He’s not even sure he should be reacting at all, let alone improving his reaction time, hence the recon. 

He goes back to bed some nights. He pretends to sleep and tries to do them both a favor by not keeping a running Time Elapsed Since Disturbance in the Force log, because on those nights, she’s up and needs her space. She’s pacing or peering out the window. She’s coiled up in a tight knot in a chair or on the couch, staring at nothing, and he’s learned from a few misfires that those nights are a solo sport, however much he’d like to help, or even know what’s going on. She needs her space, not his scrutiny.

And then there are nights when she’s raiding the fridge, or she’s settled into one of the leather chairs and flipped on the TV with the volume turned down low just for the company of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on the French Riviera. There are nights when she ransacks his desk for index cards and works furiously on a murder board in nothing but a purloined t-shirt and the emergency panties she keeps in in the night table drawer on her side of the bed, because the ones that come into the loft on her person tend to wind up in the oddest places. 

Those nights, he joins her. Even if it means a rap on the knuckles with her ice cream spoon or a forceful twitch of the blanket as a warning not to even _think_ of hogging it, he joins her. And _of course_ he joins her if it’s someone else’s murder on her mind. Unless he can coax her right back to bed—unless he can send the emergency panties on an adventure of their own. Then he does that. 

But tonight his reconnaissance mission leaves him at a complete loss. It leaves him without the faintest idea how to proceed. 

He can’t find her, at first. He _hears_ her, but he can’t find her. His mouth opens to call out for her, but her name falls to pieces somewhere behind his front teeth as the disparate sensory information comes together. She’s crying— _sobbing_ —that’s why he can hear her. The realization jerks him a few steps further into the dark of the living room. 

He sees her then, on the floor. She’s wedged herself between the coffee table and the _L-_ bend of the couch. Her head is bowed against her knees. Her pale arms, wrapped tight around them, and her bare feet, just peeping out beneath her body, catch the light angling in through the window. She is eerie, alight, faceless. She is _sobbing_. 

“Kate.” He drops to the floor at her side. He is all heavy, clumsy limbs. His voice is thready and alarmed, just when he wants to sweep her smoothly into his arms and murmur exactly the right thing in her ear. “Kate. Kate.” It’s all he can manage. 

“I’m sorry.” She’s saying it over and over, when she’s saying anything at all. It takes him far too long to work it out. “Castle. I’m sorry.” 

“Kate. _Shhhh.”_ He worms one arm behind her body. The other wraps awkwardly around her knees. He digs his chin into her shoulder trying to pull her to him, trying to get as close as he can. “For what? Kate, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” 

But she is inconsolable. She sobs endlessly, so endlessly he thinks they’ll need a nuclear Time Elapsed clock, and he doesn’t know what to do except hold her—stupidly, awkwardly hold her and try to stem the anxious tide of words, at least. 

“It’s okay.” He manages brief presses of his lips against her temple, the bare skin of her shoulder, the salt-stained curve of her chin. “I’m here. Whatever it is, it’s okay.” 

“A dream.” It’s the first strangled thing he catches that isn’t his name, isn’t some miserable perseveration of an apology. “Just a dream.” 

“A bad dream?” he asks as softly as he can. He lifts a tentative hand to brush back the hair that’s fallen across her face. “You had a bad dream?” 

“No,” she chokes out before the sobs take her again. 

It’s painful at one degree of remove—the way her spine undulates and her ribs stutter as the breath won’t come. He can hardly imagine how agonizing it must be for her. He doesn’t know what to do. 

He’s seen her cry before—at sappy melodrama, with frustration as Dick Coonan lay dying, with rage when the idea of Bracken walking free and untouchable gets the better of her. He’s seen her cry, but he’s never seen this. Never, and the feeling of helplessness is crushing. 

“Not a bad dream.” The arm slung uselessly across her knees drops. He manages to find her hand. He manages, little by little, to work his fingers between hers. “Okay, not a bad dream. Can you tell me about it?” He glides a graceless kiss slantwise across her cheek. “Would it help?” 

Her head rocks _No_ , side to side. But then her whole body shudders. She comes to something—her entire being, all at once—and her whole body shudders. 

“She was alive.” 

The words are beyond quiet—they have all the substance of dust motes in a sunbeam, but he catches them. He feels them in the deepest part of himself and he wants to howl. He wants to rage and sob along with her. 

“Your mom,” he says instead, because he won’t fail her like that. He won’t bend under a weight that is hers. “Oh, Kate. She was alive?” 

“She ran—” She’s swiping at her tears with their jointed hands, now. She’s sobbing and telling things out of sequence. “At the gate. She met my plane from—you could then. Before. She was right at the gate. Do you remember?” 

“I remember. You could do that before. You could go right to the gate. Was it college?” He’s not sure if he’s asking or prompting. He’s not sure what she needs, other than maybe to talk, and he can do that. He can definitely do that. “Did she pick you up when you came home from college?” 

“No. Nothing. It didn’t—she never—“She’s silent for a few moments, a few non-nuclear Time-Since-Disturbance-of- the-Force-clock moments. “It never happened. It was just a dream. She just ran … “ She tries to catch her breath. “She just ran and hugged me and that’s it. But she was alive, and I woke up, and I thought—” She shakes her head again. “It felt so real.”  


The words dissolve. The tears stream silently down her face. Her body feels small and frail in the shelter of his own. It’s an unnerving feeling—deeply unnerving, because he thinks of her as strength personified. He thinks of her as brave and indomitable, and she is. She _is,_ but she is this, too. She is complicated and wounded and the survivor of such loss that he doesn’t know at all how she bears up under the weight of it. 

“Can I do anything?” He whispers, because she shouldn’t have to bear up under the weight of it alone. She doesn’t have to. “Kate, is there _anything_ —”

“No,” she says, but her fingers tighten in a death grip around his, as though she’d call the word back if she could. “Yes.” She tips her head forward and plans an awkward kiss on his knuckles. “This.” She heaves a shuddering sigh. The tension in her body releases—just a fraction of it releases and sinks closer to him. “Just this.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking doesn’t feel like the word for what happens when she opens her eyes. Her lids—every part of her body—are inexpressibly heavy, as though something is pressing her, hard, into the surface of the earth. She feels dried out and swollen at the same time. Her tongue is a thick, useless thing in her mouth, and her throat—she has a moment of panic about her throat when it seems that it has closed off entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I guess Beckett had something to say? 

_Waking_ doesn’t feel like the word for what happens when she opens her eyes. Her lids—every part of her body—are inexpressibly heavy, as though something is pressing her, _hard,_ into the surface of the earth. She feels dried out and swollen at the same time. Her tongue is a thick, useless thing in her mouth, and her throat—she has a moment of panic about her throat when it seems that it has closed off entirely.

Something kicks in to quell it, though. Her heavy lids fall closed. She pulls in a long breath through a miserably clogged, raw-feeling nose. She curls her toes hard and balls her hands into fists. She tenses tired, heavy muscles from head to toe. She holds—she _holds_ until her lungs feel uncomfortably full. She holds a second more, then lets the breath out, lets the tension release In a slow, deliberate uncoiling. She goes through the ritual again, again, again until she has a clear picture in her mind of Burke’s office, of the soft leather chair, of the russet light filtering in through the blinds. 

She opens her eyes again. It feels no more like waking than before, but she’s present, at least. She’s seated, dead center, in a body that feels as if it’s been through the wringer. With an effort that makes her want to cry out, she rolls to her side. He’s there, of course. He has an arm shoved overhead, underneath his pillow. His fingers are curl over the top. He is asleep, or maybe not. 

His cheeks are pale. There are dark, thumbprint circles under his eyes, and his brows are drawn together. The creases in his forehead are deep enough to look carved, and his mouth is a straight, pensive line. He is most of the pieces of the puzzle. The throw clutched to his chest is the last. It is out of place. It belongs on the couch, and in an instant, she remembers. In an instant, the grief returns, zinging through her like a laser-guided razor blade. 

She pushes herself backward, away from him. She half falls from the bed and drags herself the rest of the way. She lands on her knees, scrambling. Here is a shirt and there are jeans turned halfway inside out. Her is a bra, a boot, a sock and something heavy—so heavy—that it must be the leather jacket she had stripped off and dropped behind her in a clear challenge that had lit a fire behind his eyes. Here, there, everywhere are the things she needs to flee, and she wants to flee. Grief, gut-wrenching, embarrassment, terrifying rage that rises up from this vulnerable, open wound—all of it demands that she flee. 

But she is tired. She is _so_ tired. She falls back on to her heels, and the movement painfully jars each individual one of her ribs, her vertebrae, the tiny bones of her ears. Her fingers are knotted in the hem of an old, soft t-shirt that falls to almost cover her knees. It slips from her shoulder and leaves it bare. Her fingers are knotted in the stretched-out neck of it now, and she is breathing in his scent through a miserably clogged, raw-feeling nose. She is calling up the memory of his warmth and his calm, patient words. 

She rises up on her knees again and peers over the edge of the bed at him, sleeping, but not exactly. She pulls herself to her feet and kicks away the jeans, the shirt, the rest of it. 

She doesn’t flee. 

She lifts one leaden foot, then the other until she’s on the threshold of the bathroom. She doesn’t bother with the light. She slaps water on to her cheeks and takes cool sips from her cupped, shaking palm. 

Her face is there in the mirror—even in the almost-nonexistent light, it’s there—but she doesn’t bother much with it. She reaches for his heavy robe on the hook behind the door and pain sings out across all the muscles of her chest. She shrugs one arm, then the other into the sleeves and ties the belt tight. 

She leaves him sleeping, though not exactly. She heads for the kitchen—for coffee—but that’s simply practical. Even with the long sleeves of his robe flopping down to her wrists, getting in the way, it’s all muscle memory. 

What comes next is something else. She stoops for the cabinet beneath the island, the one where he stupidly keeps the pans. She sets the one she likes on the stove top and turns on instinct for the refrigerator. She produces eggs, butter, milk, the last of the bacon. She reacts up high for the bread in the cabinet, the toaster down below it. 

She whisks and heats and tends to the delicate work of scrambled eggs. She grumbles to herself as she dives for a second pan that’s no good for frying bacon, but will have to do. She finds a bowl, a cutting board, strawberries and blueberries and melon in the fridge. She moves ploddingly at first, clumsily, then with certainty—with life returning to her fingers and toes and tiny, aching muscles that hold her head up. 

The eggs are done too soon. The bacon should have come first and she knows that. She _knows_ , but she doesn’t let it derail her. She pops a lid on them. She slides the whole thing underneath into the warmth of the oven with its pilot light. She pours blessed coffee and slices, washes, arranges the fruit. She loads up the toaster and slaps the lever down. 

She turns and finds herself in his arms. 

“Kate,” he rasps. 

His throat is as wrecked as hers. His hands, steadying her hips, are as heavy, and he’s shivering. He’s shivering because she stole his robe. 

“Sorry,” she says, sliding her arms around his waist, sharing _her_ warmth for once. 

“Don’t.” He tightens his hold on her. He crushes her sore ribs. “Don’t say sorry.” 

She remembers, then. She tastes his name and those two words like ashes. _Castle, I’m sorry._

“Not for that.” She presses a pained, incongruous smile against his chest, because, yes—for that, too. For the terrifying void she knows she was, but right now, mostly not for that. “I took your robe.” 

“Oh,” he says. He runs a hand along the plus fabrics s though collecting evidence. “Oh.” 

They cling to each other like that for a while, wordless and heavy and needing to be sure of one another. But the toaster pops. There’s smoke over his shoulder and she needs to save the bacon. There’s coffee cooling in her own cup and one to pour for him. 

“Sit,” she says, shooing him away. “I’m okay.” 

She pre-empts him, though it’s not true. They both know it’s not quite true. But he sits obediently at the breakfast bar, heavy-lidded and quiet as she moves briskly to set placemats and bright white plates, gleaming silverware, and napkins that are a little on the obscene side of cheerful. He watches as she butters toast, scoops eggs, plucks sizzling hot bacon from the pan with her fingers and shovels it on to his plate, on to her plate. 

He waits patiently until she comes around sit on the stool beside him. He turns, then. They knock knees as he winds his arms around her. 

“You’re not okay,” he whispers against her cheek. His lips glide to find hers and she tastes the salt of her own surprising tears. She wonders how long they’ve been falling. She wonders. “You don’t have to be okay.” He strokes her hair. “It’s hard. It has to be so hard—“ 

“I’ve never had one like that before.” It’s as much a surprise—as much a revelation—to her as it is to him. “A dream. I’ve never had one that’s just … her. Happy. Alive.” She swipes her face hard against his shoulder, soaking his shirt. “It’s always—always been bad.” 

“And this one was … good?” He pulls back to look at her face, then thinks better of it. He cups the nape of her neck and lets her cheek rest against his chest. “At least a little good?” 

She pulls in a breath. She bunches her fingers and toes and holds on to herself. This is a lot. Trying to find an answer to that is a lot, but the scent of bacon, oddly enough, guides her—the scent of buttery eggs with a hint of red pepper. 

It is a little good. The dream, and this—the larger pattern of nights that she’s been up with old movies and the sounds of the city. Nights she’s wandered from wind to wall and back again, trailing her fingers over piano keys and picture frames and the hundred things that make this place a home. 

“It’s a little good.” She disentangles herself from him—mostly. She winds her ankle around his calf and bumps herself jerkily closer to him, even as she picks up her own fork and nudges his elbow until he picks up his. She lets the first forkful of eggs melt on her tongue before she goes on. “I’m thinking about her a lot. More. About _her_.” 

She waves a frustrated hand in the direction of the pans on the stove, the spatula sitting at an awkward angle. They have something to do with something. He knows. Of course he knows. 

“About her.” His eyes close in pleasure as he gets his first taste of the eggs, too. “Not about her murder—about her.” 

That’s it. The tears press against the back of her throat, because that’s it. Whether its him or the warmth of his family tucked into every crevice of this place—whether it’s _her_ and all the hard work she has done, is doing, will do with Burke in therapy—whether it’s all of that put together or something else entirely, that’s exactly it—she’s thinking about her mom, not her mom’s murder. 

“I don’t get to.” She doesn’t like the declaration. As soon as she makes it, she doesn’t like it. “I don’t _let_ myself. With my dad, it was so hard for so long. I didn’t know what might … hurt him too much to think about.” 

She shakes her head and gives an ugly snort of laughter at the splash of a tear on the countertop. A long moment elapses. They eat in silence, but the air feels full. The world feels full and heavy and a little bit good. 

“You did this before,” he says hesitantly, at last. “A feast and you told … you were telling my mother how she—” 

“How she’d cook on the weekends.” She looks at the spread before the two of them, at the pans and knives and cutting boards again and she sees—continuity. She sees wholeness and a life filled up, not the piecemeal, stop and start of her existence for so long. She feels the difference in her still-heavy limbs and her sandpaper eyelids. “I forgot about that,” she says aloud. “I forgot.” 

“That’s what I’m here for,” he says with a smile that has some of his usual, careless charm in it, and it’s good. It’s ormolu than a little good. “To remind you.”   
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: That’s certainly it. 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Just a bit of nothing. These dreams are the worst. And the best. And the worst. 


End file.
